Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 September 2022
67. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications his proposals to reduce the amount of polyethylene terephthalate, PET, plastic exported from Ireland considering options are available for the domestic recycling of that waste. [45768/22]
View answerAt present, the quantity of recyclable materials placed on the market by industry in Ireland is in excess of domestic recycling capacity and the waste management industry relies, in part, on the export market to meet its processing needs. As Minister of State, I do not have the power in an open market to direct waste to be kept within Ireland or that it be directed to a specific facility for recycling. That being said, Repak, the national packaging extended producer responsibility scheme, is incentivising domestic recycling ahead of recycling abroad. That is because it is not a Government body. Repak's scheme promotes domestic recycling and maximises funding to operators that collect, separate and reprocess PET plastics in Ireland.
For household collections, an additional reprocessing subsidy was introduced in 2020 and is only available to plastic reprocessors with operations in Ireland. In 2022 this subsidy increased from €35 per tonne to €50 per tonne. For commercial collections there is a stepped system in place with the highest subsidy payable where material is recycled in Ireland, mid-range funding where material is recycled in the EU or UK, and a reduced subsidy for material sent outside Europe. The forthcoming deposit return scheme for plastic bottles and aluminium cans, when operational, will increase the quantity and quality of materials available for recycling in Ireland.
I welcome the recent visit by the Minister of State to Shabra plastics facility in my own constituency. Regardless of the constituency it is in, I am sure from his engagement, as local Oireachtas Members will have heard, that he is bound to have been astounded by the facts as they are. A company that is in Ireland has to import PET plastics in order to remain viable, while Irish waste collectors are exporting significant tonnes of that same product even though they are subsidised by the Irish taxpayer through Repak.
There are a couple of things the Government has the power to do. The first is to introduce a levy on the use of virgin plastics, something other EU states have done, but as with previous questions, the answer here is that we have to wait for an EU-wide response. In many cases when things affect ordinary individuals the Government has no problem acting unilaterally and swiftly but it seems that when things impact on big global companies there is a reluctance.
Indeed, at the invitation of Deputy Niamh Smyth I went up and had a look at Shabra plastics in Monaghan, one of many visits I have made to Monaghan. I could see it is importing plastic from all around the world and meanwhile Irish plastic is being exported all around the world in contravention of the proximity principle. The question is how do we address this. We are not waiting for European agreement on a common virgin plastic tax. There are countries that brought one in. My Department is examining what form that could take and it is part of our circular economy strategy at the moment. I have been in contact with the Department of Finance, which pays out the unrecycled plastic tax as part of its EU membership following Brexit, whereby that became part of our EU membership costs. There is an incentive in the country to reduce the quantity of unrecycled plastic that exists and to do everything we can to make sure it is reprocessed. Repak does have an objective of processing plastic and recycling it domestically. I will look over the agreement we have with it over the rates they pay for local recycling.
In a previous written response to me back in May, the Minister of State indicated that the data relating to the quantities of PET plastic that are recycled domestically and exported were not collated by his Department. Will he indicate as a first step that this has now changed and that he plans to provide the data? We are having a debate in the abstract if we do not know precisely how big of a problem we are dealing with.
In respect of the levy on virgin plastic, it appears to be a no-brainer in terms of the language the Government uses. Whenever we are talking about ordinary people using coffee cups, plastic bags or whatever, they are all measures that I support. There is never any issue. We never have to carry out years of analysis or wait to see what is happening at a European level. Virgin plastic being imported into Ireland is a source of pollution and therefore it would make eminent sense that there would be a levy on that in order to encourage the use of recycled material.
The unrecycled plastic tax on packaging waste is calculated by finding the quantity of plastic packaging put on the market and then subtracting the quantity that was recycled. I will get the Deputy an answer for who the authorities are who calculate those statistics. If it is not my Department it is probably the Environmental Protection Agency, the Central Statistics Office or somebody.
On the question of a virgin plastic tax, we are looking into that. We do not have to wait for EU approval. What is being imported into Ireland includes large quantities of recycled material as well as virgin plastic. We have both coming in which hardly makes any sense. I am glad to see what Shabra is doing. It is an Irish company that is making a profit and one of the only companies that is reprocessing plastic in Ireland. We will do everything to make sure companies like that thrive in the future.
